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Missouri is trying to keep these supposedly healthy free-range deer
from getting a fatal disease which will destroy their brains

The Missouri Department of Conservation will increase surveillance for chronic wasting disease in six Southwest Missouri counties, given that 88 cases have been found so far this year in deer and elk in four northern Arkansas counties.

MDC, which made the announcement last week, said the targeted counties are all within a 50-mile area of the positive Arkansas tests.

So far, the disease has been found in four counties in Arkansas — Newton, Madison, Pope and Boone, but more testing is being done in that state, according to Keith Stephens, chief of communication for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

“We expect to find others, but we don’t have anything confirmed yet,” he told the Globe last week.

The Missouri counties that will be the focus of the surveillance area are Barry, Christian, Douglas, Ozark, Stone and Taney.

Arkansas officials confirmed their first positive test in February on an elk that was killed near Pruitt along the Buffalo National River in October. It was the first positive test for CWD in Arkansas. Since then, positive tests also have been confirmed on three other elk and 84 white-tailed deer, said Stephens.

This spring, MDC announced it had increased efforts in parts of southern Missouri to collect samples from sick and road-killed deer, but none of those have been positive. According to Tim Russell, MDC wildlife regional supervisor for the southwest corner of the state, Missouri has confirmed 27 cases of CWD — all in deer — since it began testing for the disease throughout the state in 2002.

The first positive test was in 2010. Those cases were found in counties in the northeast, central and east-central portions of the state. Missouri has tested more than 51,000 deer so far.

CWD is a a neurological disease that infects only deer and other members of the cervid family by causing degeneration of brain tissue, according to authorities with both states.

When asked if Arkansas has identified a cause or a source, Stephens said last week, “We don’t have a ground zero.”

“We are going to try to contain it,” he said. “This is more important to us right now.”

Stephens asked anyone who sees a deer acting strangely — separate from the herd, drinking a lot of water, foaming at the mouth or excess salivation — to contact authorities.

Other signs of the disease could be emaciation, lack of coordination or even paralysis, according to Russell.

MDC asks anyone who sees a deer portraying signs of illness or abnormal behavior to call their local MDC office or contact the county’s conservation agent. The more details callers can provide (the animal’s sex, location, picture of video images, etc.), the better the deer can be located and the situation assessed.

While there is no evidence that CWD may infect humans, both states advise hunters to avoid eating animals that have the disease.

The AGFC also has scheduled 11 public meetings throughout the state Tuesday through Thursday to discuss chronic wasting disease and regulations being proposed in an effort to manage the disease.

The nearest of those to Southwest Missouri will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Pauline Whitaker Animal Science Center, 1335 West Knapp Ave., at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

More CWD information can be obtained by calling MDC’s Southwest Regional Office in Springfield. Information on CWD can also be found at mdc.mo. gov.

Some time ago I posted an Idea called "Prion Poison Prevention" (see link), because it seemed to me that prions pose a unique threat that needed to be seriously addressed. Today it occurred to me that because prions exist and are bad, misuse of them is likely to be inevitable. So I am posting this more for the criminal investigation squads, than for the criminals. (There may also be a better place here on the HalfBakery for it, but I don't know where yet.)

If you don't already know, prions are an unusual brain protein that can exist in at least two different shapes. Since the functioning of a protein depends a great deal on its shape, it happens that prions of one shape are not usefully functional. However, that particular shape is still functional in a horrible way: it can cause a properly-shaped and functional prion to become distorted into the useless shape! When this happens for a significant time in the brain, literal holes develop in brain tissue and mental functions diminish until death occurs. There is no cure.

The next bad thing about malformed prions is that they are biologically pretty stable. If an animal has died from bad prions, and it is processed to feed other animals (including humans), then those prions can survive both cooking and digestion, AND enter the bloodstream and cross the blood-brain barrier and begin their ugly task of converting good prions into bad.

Next, prion diseases tend to work slowly. It can be months after eating some bad prions that they start to have a significant effect. Which brings us to the Idea that prions might make a pretty good murder weapon. Put some in someone's salad, and they won't be detectable to the taste, and they are not poisonous in any ordinary sense, and they are not biologically active like bacteria or even viruses, AND the victim will have no idea how the brain-degenerator was acquired. What can the cops do?

I don't know! Obviously we need Prion Poison Prevention more badly than ever!

— Vernon, Jul 26 2005

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The shape of prions, formed by the protein folding and "mutating", makes it resistant to efforts to destroy the prion. I was wonering whether there were enzymes that could unfold the folded protein to either return it to it's normal state or allow it to be destroyed.

I've also read that a prion infecting one species can't easily be introduced into another species, but when it is, it gets more easily transferred in the new species in time.

Not that it has any real relevance to this, I just think it's interesting.

— pooduck, Jul 26 2005

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What exactly is the idea...are you suggesting using prions as a weapon?
— ldischler, Jul 26 2005

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. [ldischler], this is something of a dilemma. I am not suggesting USING prions as weapons; I am suggesting that they ARE potential weapons and that inevitably somebody will use them as such. I don't want to encourage that use, even though I know that just by mentioning it somebody will think it worth trying... What I really want here is credit for giving the cops a chance to think of the Idea, "Hmmm, maybe this brain-deterioriation case is actually a homicide."
— Vernon, Jul 26 2005

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Vernon - I think you've made a very good point.

However, I'm not sure that prions would make a good murder weapon. I suspect the transmission rate is very low for non- human prion (most meat-eaters in the UK probably ate a fair dose of bovine PrPsc in their time, but fatalities so far are very very few), and the latency time is huge. So, if you lace someone's food with it, you have a very small chance of killing them in several years' time (if they don't happen to have the resistant genotype).

There's also the question of how you get hold of large enough amounts of PrPsc to raise the odds of success. You'd need infected livestock and, preferably, a half-decent kitchen- lab to enrich the prions. People are working on synthesising PrPsc (for example, from normal PrPc by chemical modification, or by genetically modifying PrP to mis-fold spontaneously), but I don't think anyone has yet demonstrated infectivity this way (unless it's quite recent).

You might get a higher chance of transmission with human PrPsc, but getting hold of this would be even tougher.

The other possible use would be as a terrorist weapon (assuming that terrorists would have more resources to produce PrPsc, would be prepared to infect only a small random percentage of a target population, and are happy to wait several years). It would probably be easier to lace food with PrPsc than with most other, more easily-detected toxins or pathogens.

However, even as a bioterrorism agent, prions are less than ideal. They lack the immediate impact of a bomb, which can kill as many people far more easily, and which elicits a much greater response than the announcement that "of the 14 vCJD deaths this year, it is estimated that between 1 and 4 could be attributed to the adulteration of foodstuffs by XYZ seven years ago."

So, it is a great piece of thinking (and, no doubt, someone somewhere will be murdered in this way, sometime), but I suspect that many, many more people will be murdered in other 'untraceable' ways instead.
— Basepair, Jul 26 2005

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In this era of genetic engineering, we could TODAY modify bacteria to churn out lots of prion protein.//
We could indeed, and several people of my acquaintance do this routinely (though not for malicious purposes). However, in-vitro templating leading to large amounts of infectious material has not yet (though I may be out of date here) been demonstrated. (I'll ask my wife - her field.) But, I agree, if it's not yet possible then it soon will be. (It is probably more efficient to engineer in amino-acid subsitutions which lead to spontaneous mis-folding; but again, I don't think this has been done successfully yet to create an infectious protein).

But then you're looking at having a decent molecular biology set-up (more so than if you're just purifying PrPsc from animal remains). I'm not saying it's not possible, just that I can't imagine many scenarios where someone would choose this as a murder weapon.

If you want a simpler way to *possibly* kill someone after a long time, with little risk of being caught, just impregnate their pillow with a radioisotope (stealable from any decent lab) and hope they develop a brain tumour, then remove the pillow. No residual evidence, and the cause of death is probably common enough to avoid suspicion.

Deer hunters in seven Missouri counties are being advised to test animals they harvest this fall for chronic wasting disease.

The recommendation follows positive tests for CWD in 104 deer and elk harvested in five counties in northern Arkansas, including two counties along the state line.

The Missouri Department of Conservation announced this spring that it was increasing surveillance for CWD in six Southwest Missouri counties — Barry, Christian, Douglas, Ozark, Stone and Taney — given the Arkansas outbreak. This week, it added McDonald County to that list.

Archery season for deer opens in Missouri on Sept. 15.

Arkansas officials confirmed their first positive CWD test in February in a female elk that was killed near Pruitt the previous October. Since then, positive tests also have been confirmed for four other elk and 99 deer in that area. According to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, CWD has been found in nearly one-quarter of the harvested deer tested in Newton[/URL] and Boone counties in Arkansas — 62 of 266.

The closest positive test to Missouri in those five counties was found in eastern Carroll County, about 15 miles from the Missouri border.

CWD is a disease that infects deer and other members of the cervid family — elk and moose — and causes degeneration of brain tissue, according to authorities with both states.

Arkansas officials have set up a special management zone in and around those five counties with additional regulations to try to limit the spread of the disease, said Keith Stephens, spokesman for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Those regulations include restrictions on the importation or transportation of deer into and out of the zone.

"We are trying to contain it in that area," Stephens said.

The commission also has banned statewide the use of natural scents or lures that contain deer urine or other biological fluids that can carry the prion, a protein, that is believed to be the infectious agent.

"People mostly want to know if it is OK to eat the meat," Stephens said. "We try to tell people there has never been a case where it has transferred to a human."

The Arkansas Department of Health, citing the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, and the Missouri Department of Conservation have also said there is no evidence the disease can spread to humans.

Nevertheless, Stephens said wildlife and health experts advise people not to eat any deer that appears sick or tests positive for the disease.

To date, no cases of CWD have been found in southern Missouri. However, according to Francis Skalicky, Department of Conservation outreach and education specialist in Springfield, Missouri, has confirmed 33 cases of CWD — all in deer — since it began testing for the disease throughout the state in 2002. The first positive test in Missouri was in 2010. Those cases were found in counties in the northeast, central and east-central portions of the state. Missouri has tested more than 51,000 deer so far, Skalicky said.

Missouri Department of Conservation officials want hunters to test any deer killed in those seven counties this fall.

"We are encouraging hunters to have samples taken from them because of the proximity to the Arkansas area," he added.

Beginning next week and continuing through Jan. 15, hunters in those seven counties are advised to take harvested deer to either the department's Ozark Regional Office in West Plains or the Southwest Regional Office in Springfield. Testing will be available during normal business hours, usually 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Testing is free for hunters, and the department will make results available to participating hunters as they become available.

Hunters also can take their deer to the following locations in Barry and McDonald counties to be sampled for CWD testing.

Department of Conservation staff will also collect tissue samples from select meat processors during the opening weekend of the modern firearms deer season.

Both states also are asking people to report deer that appear sick to local conservation agents. Some unusual signs are lack of coordination, paralysis, excessive salivation, unusual behavior and emaciation.

Guidelines

Arkansas hunters also are being asked to take precautions when field dressing deer, including wearing latex or rubber gloves, to not cut through bone and avoid cutting the brain or spinal cord.

"Little is known about whether infected cervid parts pose a risk to the environment; researchers have discovered that prions readily adhere to various elements in the soil and remain infectious for many years," according to Arkansas Department of Health guidelines. "Therefore, it is recommended that bones and other parts of the carcass of an animal suspected or known to have CWD be double bagged in strong garbage bags and disposed of at a landfill with an approved dead animal disposal area."

A Disease You Need to Learn About

These are elk along the buffalo river in Arkansas. Tested animals from
this herd have been found to have chronic wasting disease.
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The public is being misled about chronic wasting disease in deer. If you eat deer meat, you need to know that several Missourians HAVE BEEN diagnosed with the disease, known as Jakob-Kruetzfeldt disease. It is a horrible disease for humans to deal with and you can learn all about it on the internet. It has been a disease dealt with in England for more than 30 years because of “Mad Cow” disease-- another name for it. In the U.S. it exists in deer and elk and goats and is known as “Mad Deer” disease.

In the fall issue of my magazine, the Lightnin’ Ridge Journal, on the newsstands in about a week, there is a letter from a Texas doctor you should read, concerning this horrible disease. I am not suggesting that you buy the magazine. You can just find it and read the doctor’s letter on page 64 without buying it. It won’t take long.
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This is that sick buck found last fall in Polk County.
Stumbling and staggering, he went down and then couldn't stand.
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Hunters in Missouri have been grossly misinformed about this disease, spreading to new counties each year. It is likely that it exists to some degree in the Ozarks right now, and there is no holding it back. In the Ozarks of north Arkansas it has been found in whitetail deer and elk in large numbers. I believe a Polk county landowner found a deer on his place with chronic wasting disease.He made several calls to the MDC asking them to come and check the sick deer, but no one would come.

I think that state agency is looking at this disease too much in the economic line. They really stress what it will do to the state’s economy to lose deer hunters. They say less about what it will cost them in deer tag sales. What they need to talk about, and do not, is what the disease can do to those of us who eat deer meat.

My daughter, a doctor for more than fifteen years now, has not been willing to say much to me about it when I question her, because there is so much not yet known. She did tell me that she saw a case of it in a patient at Columbia Missouri when she was finishing her doctorate at the University of Missouri. A disease created by something known as a ‘prion’, Jakob-Kruetzfeldt destroys the brain, and it is complicated to diagnose. The bodies of those known to have died from it are not taken to a coroner, but immediately cremated, as apparently instructed by the Center of Disease Control.

There is no doubt it could have been stopped in our state fifteen years ago, if the raising of penned deer had been outlawed. That is what Colorado did when they first learned of the disease… they shut down all operations buying and raising elk and deer to be used as hunted trophies. And to my knowledge,
no wild elk or deer tested for ‘mad deer’ disease to date have
tested positive in that state.

Why didn’t Missouri do that? The answer is money!!! It was becoming a big business. North Missouri deer pen operators were spending thousands and thousands on deer purchase in Ohio and Michigan, brought into our state without testing. And some of those Amish deer pen operations were making tremendous profits they had never seen in farming or ranching, tens of thousands of dollars off the sale of just one buck. The disease then started to occur in wild deer around those north Missouri operations.

I am going to continue to eat deer meat only when it is a deer I have killed. The prions that cause the disease are supposedly not found in blood, but in spinal fluid, and in the brain. If you do not cut the spine or brain in anyway, it may be that you could eat an infected deer and not contract the disease. But who knows for sure? No one! The doctor who wrote the article on page 64 of my magazine says that people have been known to get Jakob-Kruetzfeldt disease from eating meat. Perhaps that was because the meat was tainted by spinal fluid.

As for me, I will heart-shoot any deer I hunt and remove the meat from the bone without ever cutting a bone. I worry about the bone marrow as well as the spinal fluid. If you are a deer hunter, I would suggest you do the same. I process all my deer meat, and have never taken it to a processor. There is a worry that meat processors might accidentally get your meat mixed up with someone else’s. There is no problem if you are very familiar with your meat processor and confident that won’t happen.

That ridiculous “seven-point-or-better” regulation the Missouri Department of Conservation installed in two-thirds of the state was never biologically sound, never achievable for the majority of deer hunters not using binoculars from a stationary stand. It was done to bring in more money from out of state hunters who were looking for trophies, and would pay large sums to buy a non-resident tag. A few conservation agents said they never had enforced it and never would.

Now that regulation has been ditched in nineteen counties where it is feared the disease exists. It needs to be repealed everywhere, but the common sense in doing it escapes the decision makers who still think that a fork-horn will always become an 8 or 10 point trophy in just a year or so. It doesn’t work that way, and never has. Antlers don’t always progress to trophy size by letting them grow. Many factors can make a spindly six-point rack remain that way throughout the buck’s life.

My decision on whether to take a deer on my place will be whether or not he appears healthy and whether or not I can make steaks, stew meat, hamburger and jerky from the meat. I have enough big sets of antlers laying around for the squirrels to chew on, I don’t need any more. Any hunter who is out there trying to bag a trophy set of antlers again and again, needs to examine what makes him think that way.

Human greed created Jakob-Kruetzveldt disease. They created it in England by feeding meat by-products to cattle, a creature God created to eat grass and grain… not meat. Too often, the greedy don’t go along so well with God’s ideas. Their idea was to put more weight on the cow, by making it a meat eater. The added weight would mean more beef and more money. Instead, it meant a horrible disease for the cattle, and a horrible death for humans who were infected by eating the beef. In England there were many, many deaths in humans.

In the deer and elk pens, similar meat and bone by-products were mixed into the deer feed to try to make bigger antlers and more money from them. Good idea wasn’t it? No one knows where it is going to end, or how bad it might get. When the MDC people talk about controlling chronic wasting disease or keeping it limited, they are doing a disservice to those who believe them. It is not just limited to that 19 county area now, and in the Ozarks, it will move north from Arkansas soon if it isn’t already here.

Notice that our state conservation department never mentions the disease spreading to humans, but it needs to be talked about, because several known cases have occurred in Missouri. Talking to their relatives, I learned that in at least three of those deaths, venison was a big part of the diet. I’ll hunt deer this fall once again, and hope I feel comfortable eating venison for a few years to come. But I am sure that in time, deer hunting will just be too much of an uncertainty for many.
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This is one of the deer pens operated by Amish
people in Randolph County. Does are crowded
into a small area, to be bred by trophy bucks in
hopes of creating superior fawns to grow big antlers,
sold and shot. This Amish farmer told me he had
just bought a doe in Ohio for 26 thousand dollars.

Modern gun hunting season opens tomorrow morning, but before you hop in the deer stand, there are some things you need to know. Not only is safety a high priority when hunting, there's also some rules you need to follow and if you don't there could be legal ramifications.

The Missouri Department of Conservation requires that anyone hunting wear an orange vest and an orange hat. Not wearing this could result in a ticket or fine. Before using your gun, be sure to look it over and make sure the safety is in proper working condition as well as the gun itself. Also make sure to check all equipment for the deer stand, climbing gear as well as the stand.

Jarid Wilkinson, Conservation Agent: "We will be patrolling the assigned counties that we’re in, taking phone calls as they come in. We’ll also be dealing with multiple issues from trespassing to baiting violations. Like if someone has corn out in front of their stand like they’re not supposed to things like that and just routine things around the county."

New this year anyone who harvests a deer in a chronic wasting disease management zone like Barry, Dade or Cedar must get their deer checked. There are inspection locations for each county that the hunter will be required to go to.

I got Michigan Started

Michigan deer are suffering from CWD.
Michigan wardens check deer at mandatory CWD check station from this season
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A deadly disease that threatens to decimate Michigan’s whitetail deer population has shifted northwest from the Lansing area, some 100 miles, new test results show.

All but one of the new cases of chronic wasting disease in the just-ended 2017 firearm season were discovered in free-ranging deer killed in Montcalm and Kent counties, 40 total, according to the Department of Natural Resources. One case was found in nearby Mecosta County.

That is far more than nine so-called “zombie” whitetails identified in Ingham and Clinton counties the two previous years. It suggests the always-fatal disease has percolated in Michigan more extensively than previously known.

“It's clear that Montcalm and Kent have had CWD longer than Ingham and Clinton where we have identified it,” said Chad Stewart, the DNR’s deer specialist. “What we don’t know is the space between (the outbreaks).”

In all, 50 cases have now been identified in Michigan since the first emaciated, confused deer was killed by police east of Lansing in 2015. Three others were found from two penned deer farms or ranches in Mecosta County.

The 2017 deer hunting season ended Monday. On Thursday, the state will begin two brief limited hunting seasons to see if wildlife experts can connect the dots between the two outbreaks.

The special hunts will run through Sunday and Jan. 11-14 in northern Ionia County and eastern Montcalm County in 14 townships, some 500 square miles. Any deer killed must undergo testing for chronic wasting disease.

“I'm not expecting a lot of deer to be harvested, but if we are able to identify a CWD-positive animal in this area, then it will provide valuable information to inform our management decisions going into next hunting season,” Stewart said.

The DNR will soon begin capturing and collaring white-tailed deer in the western Upper Peninsula as part of a multi-year study to review herd movement as well as detect if the disease is present.

“Limiting the spread of CWD is difficult, but even more so here in the U.P. where winter severity results in increased deer movements and yarding behavior that concentrates animals,” said Terry Minzey, DNR U.P. regional wildlife supervisor, in a statement.

A special task force, meanwhile, is expected to give recommendations Jan. 11 to the state Natural Resources Commission on how to slow the disease that has devastated herds from Wisconsin to Colorado.

Bans by the state against baiting and feeding in core disease areas expanded Monday.

“We want to see a serious discussion about baiting and feeding in disease areas where we want to prevent the spread of the disease,” said Amy Trotter, deputy director of Michigan United Conservation Clubs, the state’s largest such organization.

Michigan United Conservation Clubs has opposed baiting and feeding in the past, saying it congregates deer and assists the spread of infectious disease.

“From our perspective, these numbers appear to indicate we have a new epicenter,” Trotter said of recent mandatory testing of hunted deer in high-concern areas. “What we need to know more is, Are we all linked up here? Mid-Michigan may be on the front edge of what direction it is moving.”

At this point, the best hope is to contain — not eradicate — the disease, she said.

“They are literally the walking dead,” Trotter said.

Michigan’s known prevalence of the disease is still small but has the potential to expand greatly. In early stages, deer show no symptoms as they contaminate other deer through contact or soil infected for years from urine or feces.

Prior to the recent hunting season, less than one in 1,000 white-tails tested positive since the first known free-ranging Michigan case in 2015, according to the DNR.

By contrast, however, one in 100 deer tested positive in Montcalm County during the just-passed hunting season, 32. About one in 60 deer tested positive in more-limited testing in neighboring Kent County.

A few were identified outside mandatory testing areas. Few showed symptoms, perhaps indicating the disease is in its early stages.

Concerns about the disease’s movement rose after a free-ranging deer, a 1.5-year-old buck, was identified in Montcalm County’s Sidney Township in late October. An infected 6-year-old pregnant doe was killed weeks earlier in neighboring Montcalm Township during the youth hunt. Mandatory DNR testing of deer taken there and in parts of Mecosta and Kent were initiated.

Deer hunting is an estimated $2.3 billion hunting industry in Michigan, with nearly 600,000 hunters participating in the November firearm season alone.
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